Vatican Film Library to Hold Medieval Manuscripts Conference
07/28/2017
The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library, part of the University Libraries Department of Special Collections, will hold its 44th Annual Saint Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies from Oct. 13 to 14. The two-day conference is open to the public and includes a variety of sessions addressing aspects of the production, distribution, reception and transmission of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. The conferences features work in areas such as paleography, codicology, illumination, textual transmission, library history, provenance, cataloguing and other subjects.
This year's guest speaker is Marianna Shreve Simpson, Ph.D., visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, who will deliver the Lowrie J. Daly, S.J., Memorial Lecture on Manuscript Studies. Simpson will present “Persian Manuscripts and the Meaning of Masterpiece.”
The lecture will take place at 4 p.m. on Oct. 13 and is co-sponsored by the Saint Louis University Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. A reception will follow.
The conference’s sessions, which are open to the public through advance registration, include:
- Antiquity Reimagined: Medieval Commentaries on Ancient Authors
- Islamic Manuscripts
- Manuscripts from Greater Asia
- Oriental Manuscripts Encountering European Traditions
- Manuscripts from Little-Studied Contexts
- Manuscript Patronage in Medieval Bologna
- Editing the Antique: Copies of Illustrated Antique and late Antique Manuscripts in the Long Tenth Century
SLU University students, staff, faculty, and Library Associates are admitted free of charge, but are asked to register in advance. Program information and registration is available here. For more information, contact the Vatican Film Library at 314-977-3090 or email the film library.
The Vatican Film Library (VFL) is a research library for medieval and Renaissance manuscript studies that holds 40,000 manuscripts on microfilm, principally from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. In addition to its annual conference, the library also publishes its biannual journal, Manuscripta: A Journal for Manuscript Research, and a new publication series, Manuscripta Publications in Manuscript Research. It also offers fellowships for research in its collections. The VFL is part of Special Collections in the Saint Louis University Libraries. Keep in touch with us through the Special Collections blog, Special Collections Currents, or via Twitter.